Prehistoric Predators: The Biggest Carnivores of the Prehistoric World
Permian 299 252 MILLION YEARS AGO Period As the sun rises in prehistoric Texas 275 million years ago predators set about getting their breakfast While a sail backed Dimetrodon nabs the shark Xenacanthus far right the giant amphibian Eryops makes off with a boomerang headed Diplocaulus far left
As dawn broke on the first day of the Permian period about 299 million years ago the sunlight greeted a world very different from the one we know today All of the world’s continents had drifted into each other to create one supercontinent Pangaea surrounded by a vast warm global ocean called Panthalassa And for the next 47 million years our distant cousins and ancestors were the dominant predators on the planet Lystrosaurus Early in the Permian our ancestors looked like little lizards From the outside it would be hard to tell the difference between your great and great great great a bunch more grandma great and a gecko you might see at the pet store But if you could look at the skull of one of these little critters you would be able to see something that connects you to those lizard like creatures of the Permian These animals had a single opening at the back of their skull a trait that marks the lizardish animals as belonging to a group called synapsids Along with other mammals you have a remnant of this opening in your own skull meaning that those little lizards were more closely related to you than to any reptile Because of this connection we can say that syanpsids were protomammals Our protomammal relatives didn’t stay small for long though In time they got bigger and bigger evolving into amazing shapes Dimetrodon a carnivore that could get up to 15 feet long and had a huge sail sticking out of its back was one of these weird protomammals No one knows whether the sail was useful in scaring enemies attracting dates storing energy to help Dimetrodon move or something else But because of that opening 8 Keratocephalus
at the back of its skull we know it was part of our bigger prehistoric family It was just one of the first protomammal predators to rule the Permian which later included the dog like Dinogorgon and fearsome Titanosuchus But the protomammals weren’t the only hunters around From lizard like ancestors with two openings at the back of their skulls called diapsids reptiles started to flourish too including carnivores like Archosaurus This hook snouted snaggle toothed reptile haunted waterways where it could catch protomammals by surprise when they came to get a drink While such reptilian carnivores were rare compared to their protomammal counterparts a terrible catastrophe at the end of the Permian period would clear their path to start the Age of Reptiles 9 Estemmenosuchus Fragmentary fossil of Dimetrodon
